Cafe Imports

There are few jobs in the coffee industry as romantic or mysterious as roaster. Traditionally, the tradecraft of the making-coffee darker arts has been a closely guarded secret, passed on from roaster to roaster in old fashioned apprenticeships. Other than a couple of good books, there aren’t many resources available to aspiring novice roasters. Joe Marrocco is helping to change that. The longtime Cafe Imports educator recently moved on to work with Mill City Roasters, but the year-long video project Roasting Concepts is now free to view on YouTube. We caught up with “Roaster Joe” over email in the midst of his busy travel schedule to learn the thought behind the project–and how young roasters can develop their skills.

Over the last seven months Cafe Imports has been releasing a series of videos called “Roasting Concepts.” What inspired the project?

This is a project that I worked on with Cafe Imports over several years. I know that the videos seem very simple and short, but they took a long time to conceptualize, carve out time for and put together. The idea was born out of teaching people roasting at the Cafe Imports headquarters in Minneapolis….

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee. Thanks to countless heirloom varieties and perfect environmental conditions, Ethiopia grows the best coffees in the world. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that Ethiopia remains one of the few coffee producing countries that consumes more coffee than it exports.

Like many places in Africa and the Middle East, hospitality takes a sacred place in Ethiopian culture. And at the center of Ethiopian hospitality is the coffee ceremony, an enchanting ritual in which coffee is selected, roasted, and brewed for one’s guests. Ethiopia remains a dream destination for us, but thanks to this new video from the media team at Cafe Imports, you can witness this beautiful tradition yourself, preferably with some fresh crop Ethiopian coffee in your mug.

Post written by Jesse Harriott

As a coffee enthusiast, I am super delighted to see the ever increasing recognition that coffee producers (fincas, fazendas, estates, co-ops et al.) receive for their hard work. Much of this is due to the increased efforts of coffee roasters and baristas to highlight the transparency of the coffee chain, foster direct relationships with producers and …